The other night at tennis, as we watched the kids hit the ball from end to end, we thrashed out some big questions.
Just how much should schools levy for voluntary fees?
And should the newly introduced healthy school lunch service be allowed to sell bottled water when the kids should be drinking tap water?
Then Tom's mum changed tack. She had taken a phone call from her sister who was a mixture of perplexed and amused.
The previous weekend Tom's cousin, 19, had emerged from his room. It was late because they do love a sleep in.
He busied himself making breakfast, went back into his room and then re-emerged.
As is her usual practice, his Mum was about to venture in to put some clothes away. He quickly grabbed them insisiting he would put them away. It was this act that made his Mum feel very uncomfortable.
Then he fessed up.
The night before he had hastily organised a sleepover, for want of a better description. There was a girl in his bedroom and she was too embarrassed to come out and meet them, much less sit down for Sunday brunch.
Could the pair of them just go out for a little while to let her escape? They complied and she beat a hasty retreat. They weren't sure what to make of the episode.
Neither were we. All of us with pre-pubescent children laughed nervously.
What would we do once the sleepovers turned from same sex Hannah Montana dance fests and Harry Potter movie marathons to feature the opposite sex?
One of us said there was no way she would allow her children to bring back girlfriends and boyfriends to sleep overnight. Another hoped her children would be in share houses by then and what she didn't know wouldn't hurt her.
Another theory was that if they were in an established relationship then the partner was welcome.
Then the next day I caught up with an older friend of mine. With four seemingly successful and well adjusted children, aged in their late 20s and early 30s, I asked her what her experience had been.
She related the story of one morning walking to the tram stop with her 19-year-olds boyfriend.
"A few years earlier if anyone had told me I would be walking to the tram stop with my daughter's boyfriend, after he had stayed the night, I would not have believed them," she said.
"But I figured she had got through high school and was settled into uni so it wasn't the worst thing that could happen to her."
I'm a bit undecided but it might be preferable that they were tucked up in bed rather than having their heads kicked in at a fast food outlet or out of their tree on party drugs.
But when the times comes I've already got my stand worked out.
I'll tell them to "ask your father".
